Quote

The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Certain
Embody
Might
Embodied
Humans
Tigers
Mind
Etc
Way
Traits
Think
Animals
Thinking
Animal
Around
Ferocious

More quotes by Yann Martel

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It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.
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My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour - calm, quiet and introspective - did something to soothe my shattered self.
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I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It's a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.
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You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.
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My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
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Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.
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It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.
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My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.
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Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.
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I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
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If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
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I love cinema. I think the risk of the aesthetics being fixed is compensated by other advantages. Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies.
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Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
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How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?
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People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar. We need that in our lives, the mix of the new and the old. But of course I'm flattered about the comparison with Old man and the sea. Hemingway is a great writer.
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Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.
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If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.
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Isn't telling about something-using words, English or Japanese-already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?
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Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by
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We think we live in a global village. We don't. The world is a big and beautiful and incredibly varied place. It can only be known locally, with your two feet on the ground. We should stick to our own gardens, as Voltaire said.
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